It was even bigger than Jorunhast remembered. Now, without the city around him, without the protection of walls and redoubts and buildings, it dominated the young wizard’s vision. He suddenly felt very small and exposed and alone on that bare hilltop.
Something cold and clammy settled in Jorunhast’s stomach and clung there tightly.
The dragon passed over them again, and the wizard was aware that the young prince was shouting something at him.
“The wand!” he bellowed, his smooth, beardless face almost apoplectic. “Use the damnable wand!”
The wyvern-mounted mage banked again, and the Purple Dragon followed, this time pulling out of its turn almost directly behind its quarry. The two young men on the hill saw the monstrous creature’s throat bunch and swell. Azoun was shouting again, and Jorunhast was fumbling frantically with the wand.
The dragon breathed a huge gout of acid-and the wyvern and mage evaporated. Jorunbast thought he saw his mentor move his arms in sudden spellcasting before the heavy, scintillating spittle struck, then both wyvern and wizard were lost to view, swallowed in the flow of the dragon’s breath. After the acid gout had passed, the great purple dragon was the only thing in the sky.
Jorunhast screamed a magical word of old Netheril and felt the wand glow and pulse in his hand. A bolt of flame burst from its tip and lanced upward. Jorunhast did not aim it, but the dragon was so huge he could not help but strike it. The lance of flame raked along the orchid-hued belly plates of the beast.
The great monster screamed.
The Purple Dragon convulsed and pulled itself into another tight, air-shattering turn. Fighting for calm, Jorunhast readied his next spell.
Beside him, Azoun shouted after the great beast’s retreating form, “Hail, old lizard! Think you can defeat the true rulers of Cormyr?”
The lad’s voice cracked, and Jorunhast would have sworn that the wind blew the remains of his words away, but the dragon apparently heard them well enough. It responded with a great roar.
Jorunhast muttered the last phrase of a new spell and slapped the withers of both ponies. The pair sprang forward as if released from a starting gate, their powerful legs enhanced by the magic. The ponies ran as they had never run before, sped by Jorunhast’s hastening spell.
The dragon surged through the air behind them, but the pair slowly began to increase the distance between them and their pursuer. Jorunhast looked back.
All he could see was the dragon’s open jaws-a huge, fang-toothed mouth surrounded by ancient wattles of flesh. He turned around again and bent low to spur on his mount, urging it to even greater speed.
Then he heard laughter and looked to his right to see the crown prince smiling in the racing wind. Had the dolt lost his mind?
Jorunhast turned in his saddle again. They had gained more distance, and now the dragon was gaining altitude behind them. Jorunhast pointed the wand and shouted the eldritch words again. The wand pulsed, and a lance of flame streamed over the great creature’s head. The dragon dodged it easily but came down lower now, only slightly higher off the ground than the two riders ahead.
Jorunhast and Azoun plowed forward up a shallow wash. On either side rose grass-swept slopes topped with brush. At the far end of the wash, the ground climbed to a small hillock.
Both young men dug spurs into their mounts, and the message ponies once more increased their speed, topping the end of the wash with a few dozen strides. They reined and wheeled in place, and the young Azoun raised his arm, sword in hand.
The dragon was coming in low and fast, nearly touching the grass beneath it, gliding with its wings outstretched, grazing the soft hills on both sides. Azoun dropped his arm in a short, chopping motion.
The brush lining the ridges on either side dropped away, and two lines of Cormyrean archers unleashed steel-tipped volleys against the great beast.
Had they aimed at the creature’s scaled body, their shots could have done little more than annoy the beast. Instead, they shot for the wings, riddling the tough membrane with a myriad of holes. A few shafts caught at lucky angles and tore great gouges in the wing surfaces.
The dragon was coming in too low to recover as the air beneath its wings suddenly streamed through the holes. It tried to land on its massive haunches, but it was moving too fast and sprawled forward as it landed, its head and long serpentine neck plowing a furrow along the base of the sod-covered wash. There was a sound like a ship’s mast being rent in twain, and Jorunhast knew it had to be one of the dragon’s massive wings doubling under it.
They had knocked the creature out of the sky. The soldiers on either side of the wash threw down their bows and snatched out their swords. They lowered their helms over their faces and, with a single shout, spilled down from both rises to where the wounded dragon thrashed.
Azoun dismounted and pulled out his own blade. The mage nearly fell from his mount trying to stop him.
“Those are my men,” said the crown prince angrily. “I should fight with them!”
“And further risk the loss of the heir to the throne?” Jorunhast dismounted and put a firm hand on the young man’s shoulders. “I think not. Let them wear the beast down. By then Thanderahast and a real warrior, Lord Gerrin, will be-Oof!”
The crown prince moved more swiftly than the wizard had thought possible, elbowing him sharply in the gut. Jorunhast felt the air rush from his body as he fell to his knees, gasping helplessly. By the time the world stopped spinning around him, the young royal warrior was halfway to the battle.
The soldiers swarmed over the great dragon like ants, and with about the same effectiveness. They hacked at the great beast’s scales, and occasionally an armsman would loosen one sufficiently to strike at the meat beneath. For Thauglor, it was akin to being stung to death by gnats.
The great beast had its own bag of tricks. The one good wing swept a half-dozen attackers into dazed and bruised ruin. Its tail smashed another two. Its claws gutted a pair of warriors where they stood. And its huge jaws ran bloody as its head snaked out again and again to snuff out the life of another Cormyrean soldier.
And the only heir to the throne of Cormyr was charging into that maelstrom of death.
Jorunhast looked around. If Lord Gerrin was coming, he was taking his damned time about it. Thanderahast was wounded or dead. The mage raised the wand but saw that the crown prince was in the way. The insufferable, irritating, impulsive crown prince. A lance of flame would burn through him and into the dragon itself. Perhaps Cormyr would be a better place without him.
Jorunhast paused for a long moment, then cursed and ran down the hill after the prince. Even with all these warriors rushing about, you’d think less work would be needed to get a clear shot at something as large as the dragon. And as he ran, the mage swore to himself that, even under torture, he would never admit he was running to Azoun’s rescue.
The young prince reached the dragon and struck. His blade bit deep. The sword, supposedly crafted long ago by Amedahast herself, parted a scale as if it were jelly and slid into the creature’s haunch, striking to the bone.
It was as if the dragon had been struck by lightning. It heaved itself from the ground, shuddering, and tried to roll away from the attack, crushing a half-dozen soldiers and almost snatching the blade from Azoun’s hands.
But the scion of the Obarskyrs would not let up. He tore the blade free and cut another long, shallow wound along the dragon’s belly. It gave out a great scream and spat a huge gout of acid. Men screamed where the acid struck, but the dragon had little time to enjoy their deaths. Its serpentine neck snapped around, and its jaws closed on the small form of the crown prince.
Jorunhast shouted, but then he saw that Azoun had avoided the fanglike maw of the beast and was hanging by the loose wattles at the corner of the creature’s mouth. The dragon shook its head like a dog trying to dislodge a tick, but the young monarch held fast. The wizard saw a white flash of clenched teeth as he stared at Azoun’s blurred form.